The
more films like Jason Bateman’s Bad Words I see, the more I realize just what
an accomplishment Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa (2003) really was. The films share
a very basic setup – that a man who should not be around children, gets stuck
hanging out with them for an extended period of time – says and does all sorts
of hilariously inappropriate things to them, and eventually the man who seems
like an irredeemable asshole ends up really feeling for the kid who he spent
the entire movie being annoyed with. The difference between Bad Santa and Bad
Words really is simple – Bad Santa is hilarious – one of the best comedies of
the 2000s, and Bad Words is rather dull and boring, and even at 89 minutes
feels drawn out and boring.

Bad
Words marks the directorial debut of its star Jason Bateman. In it, he plays
Guy Trilby, who finds a loophole in the National Spelling Bee rules that allows
him – a 40-something year old man – compete against children. He’s some sort of
genius – and a complete asshole – and after a regional bee, he ends up at the
National one that will be televised. The whole thing is being bankrolled by a
reporter, Jenny Widgeon (Kathryn Hahn) – who expects to get a good story out of
this, although Guy won’t answer any questions about why he’s doing what’s he’s
doing. The two do sleep together though, even though all indications are that
they hate each other. Guy has that effect on people. The head of the bee – Bernice
(Allison Janney) tries everything she can think of to get rid of him, and the
bee’s founder Dr. Bowman (Philip Baker Hall) fumes that Guy is making a mockery
out of everything he loves. Only one contestant – Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan
Chand) – seems to like Guy. He’s staying at the same hotel – right down the
hall – and doesn’t seem to get that everything Guy says to him is horrible
offensive, racist and inappropriate for a 10 year old.

The idea behind Bad Words is ridiculous – I’m going to
assume there is no way that a 40 year old man could compete in this spelling
bee – but I’ve seen comedies which stupider premises end up being hilarious.
Bad Words isn’t funny though. It basically alternates between two kinds of
scenes – the first has Bateman say horribly profane, offensive things – which Bateman
is capable of doing, and he makes some of them funny – and the second, the more
dramatic scenes where eventually why Trilby is doing what he’s doing comes out,
and he bonds with Chaitanya, mostly because both have assholes for fathers. Comedy
requires momentum –it requires scenes to build on each other to pay off.
Bateman never really gets the pacing of the movie correct. The best scene is
probably the first – where Bateman sets up the movie with a quick, funny scene
at the regional bee. That scene works, and makes you want to see where the
movie is going. Unfortunately, where the movie is going is basically that same
scene again and again and again.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Bad Words – something
Bad Santa avoided completely – is that all the characters in the movie aside
for Bateman are lifeless, dull and uninteresting. That’s a shame – and more a
fault of the writing than the acting, as the likes of Hahn, Janney and Baker
Hall can be great – but they simply are not given the material to work with
here. Think of all the interesting supporting characters in Bad Santa – from John
Ritter to Bernie Mac to Lauren Graham to Tony Cox to Cloris Leachman. Some only
got a scene or two, but they all leave an impression. Not so much with Bad
Words.

It’s probably not really fair to compare Bad Words to
Bad Santa- not many modern comedies are nearly as good as Bad Santa are. But
watching Bad Words I couldn’t help but think of the earlier film. It does
everything Bateman tries, and fails, to do in his film brilliantly. No wonder
it’s become such a cult hit. I doubt Bad Words will.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.